Here's more. Fun times for all. By the way, for those who care, my book is currently (as of June 2008) being reviewed by a publishing house for possible publication. Of course, this part can apparently take six to eight months. Argh grr snarl! I hate waiting. Gah.
SWIFT AND BLINDING VIOLENCE
By Hydraa
Rosette stepped out of the car she'd borrowed from the Order and driven all the way from New York City to downtown Toronto. It was a city she'd never been to before, but it didn't really look different from New York or Chicago or even San Francisco. Late at night as it was, only a few people hurried down the sidewalks on their own business, barely looking at the blonde girl in the nun's headdress and skirts.
Rosette in turn didn't look too much at them. Her attention was on a building across the street, on the other side of a small square. The square itself fronted a large, opulent building with Grecian columns framing the huge doors. Tall, expensive windows rose up the four flights as well, leading to a red tiled roof with elegant dormers. To Rosette, the architecture looked unbelievably tacky, but she'd been watching the place for two days and she was absolutely sure that it was where Aion was living, along with his minion Genai.
She'd watched them both entering and leaving over the last two days, along with the staff which kept the place clean. None of the servants stayed long past dark, the two demons obviously preferring their privacy, and, most importantly, tonight Genai was away as well. Rosette didn't care where he went or how soon he'd be back. She intended to be done and gone before he returned.
Walking around to the back of the car, which she'd picked because of its extra large trunk, she opened the boot and rummaged inside, pulling out various items and draping them around herself. The few people still outside so late at night started to take notice of her, some of them murmuring to one other as they stopped to watch while the more intelligent of them hurried away, looking frightened. Hopefully none of them would call the police, but Rosette planned to be gone before any of them showed up either.
Finished with her gear, she pulled a final item out of the car, bracing the length of it over her shoulder as she turned towards the house. Never having seen anything like it, the spectators kept watching curiously, one of them even going so far as to wrinkle his nose and spit on the edge of the sidewalk.
"What's that, girlie?" he asked. "Some kind of fandangled vacuum cleaner? Did your mama give it to you?" He laughed at his humour, as did the men standing with him.
Rosette grinned at him, easily holding the heavy weapon. "Nah, a demon made it for me. She calls it a rocket launcher." Turning, she sighted through the scope, crosshairs lining up nicely right on the centre of the window in the very middle of the house, and pulled the trigger.
Fifty pounds of explosives packed into a missile the length of her femur roared out of the front end of the launcher, a plume of fire discharging out the back. The men shrieked as the rocket streaked across the square, arcing up, and slammed into the front of the building with an explosion that shattered glass in every building on the street and blew chunks of stone and glass back across the square and the street, showering over the screaming spectators. They ran, still bellowing in terror, as Rosette dropped the launcher heavily onto the rubble by her feet, blew a lock of blonde hair out of her eyes, and drew a set of twin pistols from one of the gun belts she wore.
"Gee, I hope I missed," she leered and sprinted across the square.
"AION!" she shouted. "YOU BETTER BE FUCKING ALIVE SO I CAN KILL YOU MYSELF!"
Racing into the thick dust cloud that was still pouring down from what was left of the house, she ran to keep her word.
--000--
Aion was at the back of the house in the study, pouring himself what he felt was a very well deserved glass of good scotch.
Without the resources he'd possessed when he had Fiore and Shader at his command, he couldn't broker deals quite so traditionally demonic as he used to, but he'd still been able to engineer a number of financial arrangements that would ensure he had power and money to keep himself very comfortable for even the duration of his long life. For the last few years, those efforts had been largely a matter of habit, but right now he felt invigorated, and the successes he'd had of late had him in a very good mood. He had the financial heartbeat of the continent in his pocket. If he felt like it, he could cripple the world into a depression it might never recover from, or guide into a paradise that would improve life for all. He just hadn't decided which option would be more beneficial to him yet.
What had him in the best mood of all though was the sword that currently lay across the marble top of the bar, his own horns gleaming dully at the hilt. Without the horns attached to his own head he couldn't speed time for himself, but he could draw on the energy they constantly collected and they held more than Genai could spare. More, he now knew of a machine that could generate astral, perhaps enough to allow him to affect time again, just as Fiore's gems used to.
He also knew that Chrno was alive and the thought of having him back was arguably better than having the sword.
Or perhaps almost as much, he thought as he reached to stroke the slim hilt of the weapon, since the sword was here and Chrno was not. He couldn't even feel the other demon at the moment, presumably because Shader had him back in the healing tanks. Aion should have thought of that possibility years ago. He could have been spared years of grief if he had.
Aion smirked and sipped his scotch, planning ahead to the meetings he had with several different banks and brokers the next day. He was pondering profit margins when he heard a bizarre whooshing sound that he'd never encountered before.
Then the entire front of his house blew up.
"AION!" he heard shouted, while he was still trying to drag himself out of the rubble that used to be his study's front wall, as well as half his book collection. "YOU BETTER BE FUCKING ALIVE SO I CAN KILL YOU MYSELF!"
That voice he recognized. Aion growled, feeling dirty, scratched, cranky, and more than a little put out.
"That bitch," he snarled, dragging his sword out from the remains of the bar as he shifted to his fully demon form and stomped out of the room, into the cloud of dust.
--000--
The house was still coming down, the centre of it mostly gone and the floors still existing above dropping chunks of rubble down into the spaces below.
In her demon form, with two inch long horns and demon wings that shifted to golden feathers at their ends, Rosette clambered into the house, peering through the dust as best she could as she tried to listen for her enemy, or better, to sense him. It wasn't something she was especially good at, even with several years of practice, but she did feel a tingling along her horns that might just indicate the presence of a demon.
Either that or it was the funny feeling she had that the house was about to fall on her.
Rosette ignored the feeling, making her way through a ruined foyer towards a grand staircase that must have been worth millions with all the antiques scattered everywhere before she blew them up. It almost reminded her of the damage she used to cause when she was a novice in the militia, only she was doing this alone and that was so wrong.
This was vengeance, pure and simple. Rosette wasn't so deluded that she'd try to pretend otherwise. Her lover was lying unconscious in a healing tank, his legions struggling to recover, and the psychotic bastard who lived here was the one who'd done it. She was going to engage in some swift and blinding violence and then go home to Chrno and take a break for a while. Aion had done nothing to deserve any restraint on her part and she wasn't going to give him any.
He was also one of the most dangerous demons in the world, if not the most dangerous, but she didn't care about that either. Layman Rosette Christopher was hardly helpless either and she was owed.
"AION!" she shouted again, peering up the stairs as the dust started to clear.
Still, for all its thickness, it was the dust that warned her. It swirled suddenly, out of odds to the rubble that was still falling, and Rosette threw herself backwards, her wings spreading as she lifted both pistols and fired into the dust before her. The swirl darted to the side, impossibly fast, and she landed on her back, her legs spreading in a near split as Aion landed before her, the point of his sword slamming into the floor right before her. For an space of time less than an instant, they glared at each other and then Rosette rolled, swinging her leg up and over as she did, clearing the pommel of his sword and slamming the heel of her boot with a satisfying smack into the side of his face. Aion grunted, spitting blood, and rocked to one side, barely keeping his balance even as the vicious tail whip that came out from the base of his skull stabbed at her. Shrieking, Rosette yanked her left hand pistol around and the barb at the end of the tail stabbed through it, stopping barely a centimetre from the end of her nose. She found herself staring cross-eyed at it, both of them gasping for breath and trying not to cough from the dust.
Aion yanked the gun out of her hand, the metal screaming as he whipped it behind him, trying to flick it away and free his barb. It was too tightly caught though and he looked at it incredulously.
Rosette smirked. "Not working out for you?" She pointed her right hand pistol at his stomach, only a few feet away. Too bad."
She fired. Aion reeled back, yelling, and she scrambled to her feet as he grabbed his stomach and glared at her. "You need to do better than that," he snarled, moving his hands, and the blonde woman saw that her bullet had torn through his clothing, but his legions repaired the damage to his body so quickly, pushing the metal out as they did, that it was like the bullet had bounced off.
He was incredibly powerful, she reminded herself, even as the older demon started to smirk. He couldn't keep it up forever though, not without a steady power source, though of course he had that with his sword. Then again, his sword wasn't an infinite power source and she'd brought so much ammunition with her.
Rosette returned his smirk and dropped her pistol, reaching up behind her with both hands. Shader had designed an elaborate system of gun belts and harnesses for her that worked as well as the gun box Chrno used to carry. Rosette brought a pair of two foot long automatic machine guns around to the front, both loaded with thirty Gospels each, and had the pleasure of seeing the consternation on Aion's face before she opened up with both of them.
On full automatic of course.
--000--
The Toronto police responded to the explosion with as much speed and ability as could be managed in the late 1920s. Decades before anything resembling a SWAT team had even been envisioned, they weren't prepared to deal with an exploding building or what came out of it.
Aion burst out of the smoke that poured from the gaping hole at the front of his former house, barrel rolling to avoid a glistening staccato of light that traced across the sky above him to slam into the empty business offices on the other side of the street. Armed with his sword, he landed heavily, crouching on pavement that cracked under him as he looked back towards the house, his handsome face twisted and monstrous with hate.
Rosette stepped out of the smoke, her own wings half spread and her headdress gone, her dress torn and filthy. She still had the machine guns though, holding them one-handed towards the white-haired demon, though they both heard the hollow click as the magazines came up empty.
Aion started to grin at her. "Almost," he gasped, turning to rise, his sword gleaming. "Swords don't run out of ammunition though."
"Neither do I," Rosette retorted and pressed the release buttons on the side of her guns. Identical magazines dropped to the ground as she swung the weapons around and brought them back around against her spine. Full magazines in a holster holder on her back slotted neatly into the guns with a snap and she brought them back around again.
Aion dove for the cover of her car, swearing venomously as Gospels ripped up the ground where he'd been standing, following him and chewing up his leg as he dove behind the vehicle, letting the heavy metal of it absorb the blasts while he tried to catch his breath. The wounds hurt horrendously, but he pressed the horns at the hilt of his sword against his mouth and shuddered, drawing deeply on the fading energy still within them, using it to fuel his Legions and repair himself. He couldn't keep this up forever, he couldn't, but Rosette Christopher had an insane number of weapons on her and he couldn't get close. He had to get close.
Or did he? Aion took a deep breath, drew in a deeper draught of energy, and reared up from behind the car, taking a half dozen hits along his side and chest as he flung the only weapon he had that could be used over a distance.
His sword somersaulted across the space between them, tumbling end over end through a staccato of gunfire before slamming hilt deep in Rosette's breast, just above and to the left of her heart.
The young woman shrieked, the sound of it turning to a gurgle as her lung filled with blood. Gasping, she dropped both her guns and crumpled to the ground. Sitting there, she grabbed the hilt of the sword with her only functioning hand, trying to pull it out as blood dribbled out of her mouth and her own Legions started to work.
Aion stepped out from behind her car, limping but already healing from the wounds he'd taken. He was nearly at his limit, but she couldn't know that and, most importantly, she wasn't as powerful as he was. Human blood and weapons or not, she had tiny, next to nothing horns and her Legions were weak. She couldn't heal in the time it would take him to walk over to her and rip her head off.
"Bitch," he gasped, glaring at her and hating her with every ounce of feeling in him. Thief, corruptor. Vixen bitch from hell. Pandemonium wanna-be."
Rosette glared at him, pale and gasping, her hand trembling even as she pulled a tiny box out of her pocket and pushed a button on it.
The car Aion was standing beside blew up.
His landing was particularly ignoble, Rosette thought as she looked at where the white-haired demon lay sprawled face down on the torn up pavement, his head half buried in a pile of rubble and a smoking tire resting delicately on his back.
"Never underestimate superior firepower," she gasped at him and whimpered, trying to get the sword out. It hurt so badly though and she had no leverage. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she tried anyway. If Aion woke up and she was still down, he'd kill her. Then he'd go after Chrno and that was worse. It was the thought of her beloved, purple-haired demon that made her ignore the sword and get to her feet, swaying madly as she reached down, nearly fainting in the process, and lifted one of the guns on her right hand. Her left arm hung limp, useless.
That didn't matter, she told herself as she staggered over to Aion, the gun hanging almost impossibly heavy from her hand as she made her way over the rough ground. Distantly, she was aware of the police and other people at the edge of her peripheral vision, but they didn't matter. Only Aion mattered, and what he could do to them all if she didn't manage to kill him now.
More movement shadowed her, people shouting at her, probably to stop. That didn't make much sense. Unconscious or not, Aion had demon wings sticking out of his back and a whip tail that still had her pistol plugging the end. Granted, she looked just as demonic herself with her half bat, half bird wings and her own tiny horns and eye ridges.
Rosette fell to her knees, then over onto her side, the sword canting her over enough for it to touch the ground. Confused, she tried to figure out what had happened and her eyes focused on an object that had suddenly appeared only a few feet from her, at the side where she hadn't been watching.
Oh applesauce, she thought as she recognized part of a cross-barrier, the kind the Order used to hold demons. Toronto wasn't supposed to have a branch of the Order in it. Canada didn't have the order at all; there was something else based here, only she couldn't remember what.
There had to be something extra in the barrier that the Order didn't use as well, she thought as dizziness washed over her. Either that or it was the sword still sticking out of her that was making her faint.
Either way, she did faint, and people she didn't know and wouldn't have recognized anyway moved in to surround them both.
THE END
Yes, Kintatsu, that vixen reference was straight from a comment you made on one of my chapters. I liked that reference.